


Basic Forensics for Idiots

by nsmorig



Series: 1920s Oxford AU [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (sorta) - Freeform, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ensemble Cast, Gen, Historical, Leyendecker Aesthetic, Mild Beau/Yasha Eventually, Murder Mystery, Oxford, Teen Rating for Murder, Trains, is it the twenties? is it 1884? who knows! not me!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-06-25 10:09:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15638583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nsmorig/pseuds/nsmorig
Summary: The countryside rolls away like a landscape of smeared oils. A house-- a manor, he can see now-- is outlined in black against the sky, its own little pocket of green manicured forests daubed on the grey hills.Molly watches it. He has nothing better to do.The tracks wind upwards towards it; the bulk of the building grows, the gardens separate out into individual hills, and his eyes defocus. The lake that surrounds the manor swings close to the train carriage, and for a moment he is flying over a shining reflection of the sky, surface shaking from the rain--Something hangs in the water, still and dark.(or: the nein get up to some agatha christie shit in AU twenties oxford.)





	1. the great western railway

 

Jester clinks a horn gently on the class, a rhythmic tapping that does nothing to calm her restlessness. Beau, where she’s almost asleep with her head on Jester’s shoulder, makes a noise like a bear waking up from hibernation and grabs at Jester’s head, apparently irritated by the noise, and she’s forced to go back to worrying the ribbons on her dress-- but. But. For once it matters if she ruins this dress. She doesn’t have any left.

 

It doesn’t seem to irritate Beau, to sprawl about in the same navy suit every day, patched at the knees and elbows and the shirt worn soft with time, and Fjord is fastidious with his clothes but he still doesn’t-- it doesn’t bother him, like it does her, that they have to get by on scratchy overcoats and that her cardigans don’t have any lace and that she can’t afford a ball-gown for every party. She can’t afford a ball-gown at all. She  _ hates _ it, and she can’t-- say anything, because there are so many more things to be upset about because it’s dresses. It’s only dresses.

 

The rain comes down, heavy and hard on the roof of the train carriage. It sleets past in solid sheets, blurring the grey English countryside into blue and white. Some days it feels like the whole country is made of metal, grey skies and grey soil and grey smog and on days like this even the grass is grey.

 

Fjord seems to sense the way her spirits have fallen and rests a hand on her knee for a moment. “We’re almost to Oxford,” he says, and she smiles at him. It’s a lie, of course. They’re still at least three hours out from the city, and then it’ll take forever to disembark and drag her meagre luggage to some inn or boarding-house for the night and she’ll still be uncomfortable tomorrow. But she appreciates the effort. 

 

Beau makes the bear noise again and snuffles into her shoulder, and then appears to give up on sleeping; the train rocks and judders and the roof sends the sound of the rain at them at three times the volume. “You’re twitching,” she says, and Jester can tell that she’s carefully not mentioning the way her fingers flick at the envelope in her hands. “Want to run down to the dining carriage and cheat some bankers at, I don’t know, three-dragon ante?”

 

She’s never heard a better idea in her life.

 

===

 

There is no three-dragon ante in the dining carriage. (She’s never heard of three-dragon ante, and suspects Beau made it up.) There is no gambling at all, in fact. It’s all terribly disappointing.

 

===

 

“It’s all terribly disappointing,” a tiefling woman announces to the room at large, flopping down next to Nott in a flurry of skirts, and Caleb’s breath catches for a moment before he realises it’s only because theirs is the only free booth in the carriage.

 

She doesn’t  _ look _ like police, or military, or a bounty hunter, and her accent is Eastern European in a way that means it is unlikely she works for the British or the Germans. Caleb still carefully doesn’t look her in the eye, letting his hair fall across his face.

 

Her fingers, deep blue and clawed, tap on the tabletop, and Caleb can imagine the way her bright smile starts to freeze as Nott stares at her-- but maybe it doesn’t. Maybe she isn’t put off. For some reason, he gets the impression that she isn’t put off by many things.

 

The train shifts on its tracks, and the lantern-light flickers and jumps. 

 

Nott sets her cutlery down with a clunk that makes him wince, and-- oh,  _ no. _ She’s going to talk to her.

 

“What’s terribly disappointing?” she says, just as he fears.

 

Caleb watches the muscles in the tiefling’s forearms relax, and. With forearms like that, maybe she is a threat after all. 

 

“There’s no three-dragon ante in here! Beau promised there’d be card games--”

 

“I didn’t promise anything,”

 

Caleb starts, despite himself, before dropping his gaze back to the table. A woman was apparently standing behind him, hand on the seat next to his head, and he doesn’t know how long she’s been there, or, or--

 

It doesn’t matter, he says to himself. She’s one woman. She’s light on her feet, that’s all. He breathes out hard through his nose and his heart rate slows a little bit. His shoulders don’t drop, though.

 

“I’ve never heard of three-dragon ante,” Nott pipes up, and Caleb resigns himself to the situation. “I do have some cards, though.”

 

Shit. Shit. Shit.

 

Nott and the tiefling woman settle down over a pack of cards; Nott gives her name as Sherrinford, and the tiefling-- Jester, which he must have mis-heard-- doesn’t blink.

 

He should never have introduced her to Sherlock Holmes. It’s only giving her ideas.

 

===

 

Fjord knocks an elbow against her arm and nods to the bar, and Beau resigns herself to the fact that they were doing this. At least she wasn’t paying for drinks.

 

The man crushed up next to the window is clearly trying to give off an aura of ‘don’t sit next to me,’ but Beau isn’t exactly the sort to listen, and she wasn’t going to be sitting next to Jester when she won and started flailing. (Somehow, she and the little goblin had figured out the rules to three-dragon ante, which was impressive, considering she’d invented it on the spot.)

 

She pokes him on the shoulder, and the man twitches again, head moving up for a moment, just long enough for him to see her questioning eyebrow.

 

“I suppose I cannot stop you,” he says quietly, and Beau carefully files away the German accent.

 

Good enough.

 

She drops down, and jerks in surprise when the dark nose of a cat nudges her hand, having apparently been curled up in the man’s lap. It looks up at her with pale eyes, and the man’s eyes flicker at her in turn, deliberating for a moment before moving his arms and letting the cat clamber onto her legs.

 

Its tiny head fits entirely in her hands. She can’t deal with this. It has teeny-tiny fangs and a squished face and closes its teeth slowly around her finger for a moment before letting go, and Beau has made a friend. Go Beau.

 

A particularly raucous thump of the table from Jester as they deal sends the cat burrowing into her stomach, and she has to blink to hold back tears. This is the best thing to happen to her all week. 

 

The man’s head flickers up, for half a second-- this appears to be a man who does things in fits and starts, moments rather than movements-- and there is something like approval there.

 

_ Well, we can’t have that, _ says a smug little voice in the back of her mind that sounds a little like Dairon.

 

She hooks her fingers under the poor cat’s belly a little roughly, suppressing an apology, and drops it back down on the grubby man’s lap, ignoring the way it’s claws skitter on the fabric of her blazer. Flicks her hair back, lays an arm over the top of the seat, takes up space. Tries to bleed ‘asshole’ out of her pores like the German is bleeding ‘don’t touch me.’

 

===

 

Yasha is standing out on the observation deck, gunfire-loud rain flying past horizontally and the clouds of dark smoke buffeting past her face.

 

Molly is not, because Molly has some sense.

 

He gets it. He’s not comfortable inside, either. Travelling with the carnival is usually fine-- caravans aren’t so bad, they’re not nearly so loud, and there aren’t bankers and dowager Duchesses staring at him. He’s perhaps more out of place here than anywhere else. Hiding in the cargo vault at the end of the train is a good compromise, and maybe if you’re Yasha you can ignore the rain and the wind.

 

The trains in his head are much calmer; he has visions of champagne and a book and relaxing and he can’t quite tell why. Who he used to be clearly liked trains. More reason, he supposes, to ignore whoever they were. Molly is now of the firm opinion that you’d have to be an accountant to enjoy trains.

 

It’s so  _ loud. _

 

He leans up against a window, grits his teeth as the rumbles buzz through his horns for as long as he can bear it and then wrenches his head away. The countryside rolls away like a landscape of smeared oils. A house-- a  _ manor, _ he can see now-- is outlined in black against the sky, its own little pocket of green manicured forests daubed on the grey hills.

 

Molly watches it. He has nothing better to do.

 

The tracks wind upwards towards it; the bulk of the building grows, the gardens separate out into individual hills, and his eyes defocus. The lake that surrounds the manor swings close to the train carriage, and for a moment he is flying over a shining reflection of the sky, surface shaking from the rain--

 

Something hangs in the water, still and dark. Hair spreads like a drop of ink, horns reaching towards the sky. Someone floats in the lake, fully clothed and face down, unmoving.

 


	2. the great western railway again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nothing actually happens except characters being sad n stressed but thats not exactly new

The train shifts on its rails as it pulls into the station; the motion rocks Fjord to and fro slowly in a manner just similar enough to being at sea that he relaxes into it for a moment before he realises and fixes his shoulders back into their proper place. The gas-lamps are lit, he notices, burning warm and smearing up the bottle-green glass of the station roof in the rain on the windows.

 

Here it is. The name of the station is painted dark and bold on the opposite wall, but he knows it without having to look; he’s been counting down the stations to Guilveray and Hardstock since Vauxhall. He isn’t getting off yet, though, and he thinks that’s worse, thinks the anticipation-nervousness-hate coiling tight and cold around his chest might let him breathe if he could only get this over with, but he has to go on to Oxford and back. He has to establish himself. He cannot-- his employers have been very clear on this-- he cannot be suspicious. He cannot draw attention to them.

 

He’s good at that. That’s easy. 

 

What he’s  _ not _ good at is waiting, not when so much depends on this, things he doesn’t yet understand.

 

The whistle blows. There is a flurry of movement on the platform, the final scream of the brakes, and they are still. They are still. He breathes out.

 

===

 

Nott’s hands stop for a second as a whirlwind streaks through the cabin, and then she takes advantage of her opponent’s momentary lapse in concentration to flick her wrist, viper-quick. Under her hands a card disappears and, just as she’s worried the spell has failed, another takes its place.

 

She doesn’t know much of three-dragon ante, or whatever version of it she and Jester have cobbled together, but she’s pretty sure that with that piece of sleight-of-hand, and with the way Jester’s gaze was wrenched away to follow the  _ huge _ woman who had torn her way through, she’s won the game.

 

Ah. Or, perhaps, she hasn’t. The tiefling’s eyes, wide and blue and much,  _ much _ sharper than she’d thought they were, are fixed on her own when she looks up again, a bright smile showing teeth. Nott tastes copper in the back of her mouth. She is conscious, for a single long moment, of how broad Jester seems to be across the shoulders, how she sprawls across the seat, how Nott is surrounded on all sides by window and table and person and there is nowhere to run, how her pistol would come up in a smooth line that would put it too close, too close to her hands---

 

Jester turns away. The moment shatters. Time continues to move as normal and Nott is still alive.

 

Someone else, however, is not. A great dramatic purple blur narrowly misses smashing his dark horns on the door-frame, technicolour greatcoat streaming behind him, determined to create as much of a disturbance as possible and shouting  _ “Murder!” _

 

Jester looks back at her. Smiles brightly. Puts a finger to her lips and she is gone.

 

===

 

Nott is gone.

 

_ Nott is gone. _

 

Frumpkin yowls and leaps onto the table, claws scratching on the leather, sniffing at where she was last. Miss Beauregard, next to him, says  _ “Shite.”  _ in a manner that Caleb is beginning to think is quite unique to her. The band manages to strike up their tune again, in fits and starts after that interruption, and he bites out a “Quite.”

 

He stands up quickly, knows he is drawing attention to himself but wholly unable to stop himself, and Beauregard has all but thrown herself out of her seat.

 

“Woah there, what’s--” starts the half-orc man that Beauregard had sent away in search of champagne, balancing a glass of milk on his upturned briefcase, before he appears to realise the situation. 

 

“Jester’s gone, huh?”

 

He says it with a certain resigned solidness that implies that Jester is a woman in the habit of disappearing unexpectedly with people’s-- people’s friends. Caleb’s train of thought brakes hard, the conductor runs up to the driver with an urgent message, and it starts again on a different track that says: a woman in the habit of disappearing unexpectedly with strangers.

 

The whistle blows. The sound of it is something harsh and unforgiving, an shrill warning that cuts its way through the trip-wires of Caleb’s brain. For a fraction of the second it is screaming metal and a sensation of falling and the visceral sensory feeling of  _ no-- _ and then it is over _. _ The orc man’s eyes flicker, panicked, towards Beauregard as the doors start to close and while Caleb is still in free-fall she takes to her feet with startling speed.

 

The doors between carriages slam open with hollow metal noises as she sprints her way down the train, shoulder held low like a battering ram, and as soon as Caleb takes to his heels to follow her the floor rolls beneath his feet as the train rumbles itself awake. He catches himself, and follows as best he can, chased by the awareness that if the train gets to full speed they’ll leave Nott behind on the station and not be able to get back to her until tomorrow, at a cost he can’t afford, and by then she might be _ anywhere. _

 

He mimics the silhouette in front of him, puts his shoulder down and suppresses as noise as pain radiates outwards from where he’d ran full-tilt into the door. There is space for little else in his brain other than panic as Miss Beauregard drops into a crouched run and throws herself over the railing and into open space.

 

They’ve hurtled out of the station by now, and here on the deck he can see the pale orange lights of it flickering in the roaring rain. They’re fading into the distance, now, along with Beauregard, who seemed to  _ soar, _ some power letting her leap, and step upon the air, and land unharmed despite her velocity.

 

A part of Caleb that he has tried very, very hard to forget catalogues the train’s velocity, and her velocity, and how high she’d jumped, and how she has yet to fall to the ground screaming of shattered femurs _. _ He does some very complex maths before he can stop it, and comes to the conclusion that  _ that’s magic. _

 

Fantastic. Just brilliant. 

 

Caleb is having a very bad day.

 

Another impact rocks Caleb, and the orc man stutters out an apology from behind him, where he’d apparently run after the pair of them.  Caleb stands still for a moment, looking out over the landscape, and breathes out hard. The rain plasters his hair to his head and seeps in around his collar.

 

“Hold still,” he says, and takes hold of the man’s arm firmly. He jolts under his hand, and Caleb watches at the edges of his vision as his free hand drifts towards empty air as if expecting a weapon and he fixes his eyes on Caleb’s hands as they make shapes in the air.

 

He takes another breath, banks on his mind like he’s always done and steps away into the air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nott: so if Beau jumped off a moving train would you copy her??  
> caleb: ja


	3. Guilveray and Hardstock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “A good detective,” Jester says sagely, “must always be prepared to take any course of action in pursuit of the truth.”

There is a great whirling and the feeling of being made of air, fragile and floating outside physics-- and then, all at once, it is over. Momentum comes slamming back into his body. Caleb lands softly on the wet grass, but the man-- and now Caleb feels he ought to have warned him-- tumbles to the ground and out of Caleb’s hand, cutting a furrow into the embankment. He swears into the ground.

  
  


He clambers to his feet before Caleb can remember to hold out a hand for him, and grins at him in a way that is a little too charming. His hand hovers somewhere near Caleb’s chest. Caleb for several seconds is completely lost until the man says “Fjord.” in a slow, amused drawl.

  
  


He takes his hand and gives a handshake he is thoroughly ashamed of. “Caleb Widogast,” he replies, after a pause that has gone on for far too long.

  
  


“Quick thinking there, Caleb. What spell was that?”

  
  


He reaches frantically for a translation, for a word for ‘gaseous’ in English that doesn’t include the implication of mustard gas. “Uh, Misty Step? Vapour Step? No, that doesn’t-- work. Misty Step.”

  
  


“Right. Real clever there.” Fjord swings his arms by his sides and brushes the dirt off his knees, seeming to reflexively check for the briefcase in his hands before he realises he’s doing it.

  
  


Caleb sets off before he can be made to talk again, pushing his sodden hair out of his face. Through the fence the train makes its ponderous way on to Oxford.

  
  


The station is quiet now, mostly still, though the eddies and waves left in the crowd by the Tiefling seem to still be wearing themselves out. A dark constable’s hat is disappearing behind the ticket offices, and a foreboding begins to rise, cold and sickly, in his chest. Nott is nowhere to be seen.

  
  


“Pal, I think you mighta left your cat on the train.”

  
  


Beauregard is stood, hat in hand and hands on hips, on the top of the steps ahead of them, looking remarkably confused and about as panicked as Caleb feels.

  
  


“Oh, ah, no, Frumpkin is--” There is a sound like  _ plat, _ the second-hand sensation of being turned inside-out, and Frumpkin is digging his claws into Caleb’s shoulder as though he has been there the whole time. “Here.”

  
  


Fjord sneezes. Beauregard squints. “Is he real? Or is he a magic cat?”

  
  


“He is both a real and a magic cat. Miss Beauregard--”

  
  


“Oh,  _ no.  _ You call me that again, you and I are going to have problems. Do I look like a ‘miss?’”

  
  


Caleb has to admit that she does not.

  
  
  
  


===

  
  
  
  


The waiting room can be described in its entirety by its carpet, which is the texture of dead grass, a featureless pale green, and laid down in one-foot squares. There is one like it in every waiting room in the world. Yasha’s head scrapes the ceiling, and she has to hold very still to avoid folding in on herself and making herself smaller.

  
  


Molly, in front of her, is metaphorically too large for the room where Yasha is literally too large. The bright colours of his coat seem stark and over-saturated against the faded, smoke-stained walls; his face looks too-real against the pale melted-plastic face of the policeman.

  
  


He’s gesturing wildly but unusually seriously, not animated with joy or self-confidence. The constable stands impassive, the conversational equivalent of a brick wall; he waits, devoid of reaction, as Molly winds down. When the wave of Molly has subsided he appears to come back to life, ticking up like clockwork. His eyes dart, only once, to Yasha before he opens his cracked, lizard-like mouth.

  
  


“How do you  _ know, _ sir, that he was murdered?” he asks, voice like dry leaves.

  
  


Molly appears, for a moment, lost; it’s visible only in the slackening of his mouth and the lines by his eyes, but Yasha sees. She wishes she hadn’t, because now it’s clear that Molly doesn’t know how he knows.

  
  


It happens more often than she would like; it trips him up, a sort of mental shock, and he’s always subdued afterwards. She suspects it happens more than she knows, but thankfully for everyone who knows him he’s not so good an actor as he thinks he is.

  
  


She trusts him. If he says the Tiefling in the lake was murdered, then Yasha will operate on the assumption that they were.

  
  


Molly rallies himself, but before he can start to baffle the constable into submission he interrupts.

  
  


“Sir,” he says, with all the animation and personality of a concrete pipe, “We will do all we can, but you must understand-- You said he was horned?” The interjection sounds final, as though it resolves the entire situation. “There is of course a limit to our investigations, and I assure you it is very unlikely that there has been a murder of any kind. We do, however, appreciate your bringing this to our attention, and I suggest that you now be on your way.”

  
  


He closes his notebook, nods before attempting a snake-like smile and leaves.

  
  


Molly deflates a little, with nothing to rail against, and turns back to Yasha.

  
  


“We’re going to be late to meet Gustav,” she says, and regrets it immediately as his red eyes turn glassy.

  
  


“Sorry.” He takes a slow breath, puts his hands in his pockets and draws himself up again. “He  _ was _ murdered.”

  
  


She shrugs. “They won’t do much.”

  
  


“How do you know?”

  
  


“How do you know he was murdered?”

  
  


Molly has no defence for that and responds, understandably, by walking away.

  
  
  
  


===

  
  
  
  


Jester grins at her incandescently and Nott’s ears flatten against her head as the pressure drops.

  
  


“What the  _ fuck,” _ she shrieks, before mind conquers panic and she drops to a low hiss, “was that?”

  
  


She winces, realising the volume of that, and drops down from the ledge, preparing for someone furious to round the corner, but the seconds pass in silence with no sound of thumping feet and Jester’s face grows pleased and smug.

  
  


“What did you do,” Nott tries again in a whisper, attempting to not sound like she’s going to kill someone. She’s not entirely sure if she succeeds.

  
  


“I made it  _ really, really hard _ for us to be noticed!! And look!!” she says-- she was the sort of person who, it appeared, could pronounce multiple exclamation marks in succession-- “No footprints!!”

  
  


She stomps in a circle, driving her expensive shoes into the soft earth of the alley-- Nott has been unable to prevent herself noticing quite how expensive they are-- which is  _ very _ \-- the sort of tiny heeled shoes worn by a society woman who never walks anywhere, now spattered and stained with mud. She’s right, though-- it doesn’t dent like it ought to, and the trail of her footprints stops a few feet away from where she’s standing.

  
  


Nott is  _ very impressed.  _ She applauds as quietly as possible, and Jester responds with another glowing smile and a happy little spin.

 

“Where’d you learn that?”

  
  


“A good detective,” Jester says sagely, “must always be prepared to take any course of action in pursuit of the truth.”

  
  


“’Course. You learned it at the Romanian police academy, I ‘spect. At Scotland Yard we just learned to sneak around by ourselves.”

  
  


Jester nods seriously for a moment before giving up the charade and dissolving into giggles.

  
  


Nott hazards a smile, waits for Jester to flinch at her teeth and isn’t quite sure what to do when she doesn’t. She turns back to the window to hide her expression, leans up on her toes and peers over the ledge--

  
  


The huge woman takes up the entire window, her eyes level with Nott, entirely expressionless and clearly waiting for her. Without breaking eye-contact she draws up the latches and raises the window-pane, and when there is nothing between her and Nott she stretches her face into a smile entirely without mirth.

  
  


Nott yelps, and stumbles back. Cortisol shoots down her spine, hot and acidic, and she can’t help the way her eyes dart left and right searching for an exit.

  
  


“Here’s a tip for you, darlings,” sounds from the mouth of the alley.

  
  


The Tiefling they’d followed stands silhouetted against the pale sky, bright as a banner.

  
  


“We may not be able to hear you,” he continues, voice dropping to a low murmur that is almost but carefully not quite a threat, “But we can still see you.”

  
  


Nott draws her pistol. It’s instinctive and she regrets it while she’s doing it, which simplifies the process of regret quite well. You save a lot of time, she thinks giddily, if you can regret things at the same time as doing them. Saves a lot of waiting around and regretting it later.

  
  


It’s not even loaded. She remembers, now, Caleb talking nervously of misfires and deciding to not risk shooting her own ribs off if they were just taking the train.

  
  


Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

  
  


He’s holding his hands up now, stepping slowly closer in a swaying walk, and she can see his face, the scars that trail down his neck, his bright dark eyes.

  
  


“Now, there’s no call for  _ that, _ ” he says, and Nott isn’t sure if she’s imagining it at first, the way the black creeps in at the edges of her vision, until there is a stinging at her temples and a bitter flood of blood across her eyes.

  
  


She can’t  _ see.  _ She freezes solid; she has no idea what this is, no idea how he’s doing this. A warm tear rolls down her cheek. When it reaches her mouth it tastes of iron.

  
  


There is a moment’s pressure and the pistol is lifted out of her hands; she blinks furiously, not quite sure if her stillness is fear or whatever spell is causing her to  _ bleed from the eyes. _ There is a rhythmic clicking and a soft, almost humourless laugh, and her pistol returns to her hands.

  
  


The stinging subsides, and her vision slowly returns, the red turning clear and running out. He’s crouched in front of her, elbows on knees, looking her steadily in the eye with a hand held out. She squints at it.

  
  


“Mollymauk Tealeaf,” he says, “Molly to my friends, and I do so hope we can be friends.”

  
  


She throws herself into motion, managing to spin on her toes and accelerate at a speed that impresses herself. This does her no good, of course, because she runs head-first into what feels like a steel girder.

  
  


It’s not. It’s an arm. But it  _ feels _ like something more solid than anything has the right to be.

  
  


While she’s still reeling, the woman straightens from her crouch, dragging Nott around by her shirt with all the inexorability of a tectonic shift. She returns to where she’d apparently had Jester backed against the wall, and to Nott’s distress Jester appears to be beginning to cry.

  
  


Her blue eyes seem so  _ big,  _ her posture so miserable, that Nott feels herself almost tear up in sympathy. The huge one next to her, her hands still holding like a vice to Nott’s shirt, clearly has no idea what to do either. Her mouth opens a little in panic, oddly-coloured eyes darting to Tealeaf as if for directions.

  
  


“I-- We were-- We were only  _ listening,  _ and--” Jester gasps, lower lip quivering, giving off an almost tangible aura of misery.

  
  


The woman’s face hardens, and Nott is on the verge of pronouncing her heartless until she says, quite calmly, “Hands off the axe, thanks.”

  
  


Jester drops a hatchet from where she’d been winding up for a swing; it had apparently been hanging on a belt-loop, unnoticed, the entire time. Her tragic face morphs into an aggrieved pout, and Nott comes to the slow realisation that she’s been had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey,,,, hey,,,, miss johnson,,, if ur reading this,,,, dont mean to push u but,,,,, i need More Yasha Lore in order to write yasha better,,,, this is urgent,,,,, thank u for ur consideration
> 
> in other news i would Die for jester¬t, the world's greatest detectives. does Jester actually believe that Nott was sent by Scotland Yard? yes.

**Author's Note:**

> listen. this au exists at least 80% for the aesthetic.
> 
> thanks to the mighty pride discord and @palinopsia for reading this over than telling me i haven't been writing rubbish !!
> 
> it's really hard not thinking of the various ocs in this as npcs??


End file.
